Navy Lacks Plan to Defend Against `Carrier-Destroying Missi

Old-Salt

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Navy, after nearly six years of warnings from Pentagon testers, still lacks a plan for defending aircraft carriers against a supersonic Russian-built missile, according to current and former officials and Defense Department documents.

The missile, known in the West as the ``Sizzler,'' has been deployed by China and may be purchased by Iran. Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England has given the Navy until April 29 to explain how it will counter the missile, according to a Pentagon budget document.

The Defense Department's weapons-testing office judges the threat so serious that its director, Charles McQueary, warned the Pentagon's chief weapons-buyer in a memo that he would move to stall production of multibillion-dollar ship and missile programs until the issue was addressed.

``This is a carrier-destroying weapon,'' said Orville Hanson, who evaluated weapons systems for 38 years with the Navy. ``That's its purpose.''

``Take out the carriers'' and China ``can walk into Taiwan,'' he said. China bought the missiles in 2002 along with eight diesel submarines designed to fire it, according to Office of Naval Intelligence spokesman Robert Althage.

LE

Didn't the USN buy some supersonic russian target 'missiles' a few years back precicely to practice against this kind of threat? I would have thought Aegis/SM2/ESSM/Hawkeye combo would be sufficient to deal with the threat in most scenarios?

MIA

Errr... how is this any more of a threat than the huge numbers of supersonic missiles the Russians were ready to throw at US carrier battle groups during the Cold War? The Chinese and Iranians can't throw nearly as many as the US as the Russians could, and the US had a plan back then.
This looks suspiciously like one guy throwing his toys out of the pram because his pet system didn't get selected.

The SS-N-27 is designed to try to defeat that combination. It's a tough customer because it's a "composite missile": for most of its flight it's sneaky, low-flying, and fairly slow: but for the exciting part where Aegis and ESSM would be coming into play, it ditches the "sled" with the fuel tanks and turbine engine, and a small "dart" finishes the attack run. It does so by accelerating to over Mach 2 while using an evasive weave, which makes it a difficult target to track and hit.

The Type 45 destroyers, with PAAMS (Sampson radar and ASTER missiles) have been claimed to be the only credible hard-kill capability against the SS-N-27 (former First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Alan West, quoted on 1 February 2006 at the launch of HMS Daring) - make of that what you will.